I recently interviewed Aaron Tang on his paper “A Fate Worse than Warming? Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Existential Risk” for the Reviewer 2 Does Geoengineering Podcast. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many other places where you get your podcasts!
We discuss SRM (solar geoengineering)and GCRs/X-Risks and Aaron’s paper in depth for nearly 2 hours, discussing different frameworks for viewing GCRs and X-Risks, systemic risk, latent risk, why I think Aaron is wrong on Nuclear War and SRM, SRM and space weather, cascading and combining risks, why the paper’s title is irresponsible, and even start talking about longtermism. A lot of the ideas we discuss may also be relevant for people interested in X-Risks in general rather than just SRM specifically, in particular because the paper takes a somewhat non-orthodox approach to characterising GCRs.
I think the podcast should be a pretty interesting listen for anyone interested in SRM (solar geoengineering) and GCRs/X-Risks, given this is the first podcast on the topic (as far as I know), and involves two of the few researchers who actually work on SRM and GCRs/X-Risks. I hope it gives you an enjoyable dive into some of the early work going on in this important and neglected area of study for people concerned about X-Risks. I also think it should give a good overview of how complex some of the issues are when trying to think about climate change and SRM and their interaction with GCRs.
The official podcast description is:
“Could SRM trigger a catastrophe that kills billions? Aaron Tang and Gideon Futurman treat this subject with the seriousness you’d expect from Reviewer 2, as they giggle their way through the episode like a couple of drunken, potty-mouthed schoolgirls. ”
If that doesn’t make you want to listen, I don’t know what will! Hope you enjoy!
Have you considered paying for the podcast to be transcribed? You may get more engagement and discussion here if it were.
I think there are digital devices that do a pretty good job for relatively little money but I haven’t looked into it properly.
Good idea, will do!
If I am honest I have struggled to work out how to do this for free, and certainly don’t have enough cash to pay out of pocket for this to be done, so I might try at some point to transcribe it myself, but I wouldn’t hold my breath! Thanks for the suggestion though!
In case you consider it in the future this could be a good place to start: https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2022/01/podcast-transcription-services-comparison/
All services listed there cost at least $60 per month however.
Edit: and to give some personal feedback on the podcast, I just listened to the episode linked here in the post. Personally I think audio quality is much more important than transcriptions, and I think the audio quality could be improved here.